The Witch's Orchard

8 Jun 2025 20:36
cornerofmadness: (books)
[personal profile] cornerofmadness posting in [community profile] bookheaven
The Witch's OrchardThe Witch's Orchard by Archer Sullivan

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


How great was it to luck into an arc for a story with a female PI that's not done comedically (nothing wrong with that but I am tired of it). Annie Gore is an interesting character, ex military, coming from an abusive household which is relevant later on. She drives a 50 year old Datsun named Honey (who is practically her own character in this) and is always hocking stuff to survive. She gets a job offer by an 18 year old boy, Max, who wants information on his sister's disappearance.

10 years ago three girls went missing in North Carolina's appalachian region and Max's sister was one of them. He wants Annie because she was raised in Appalachia too and feels she'd understand the area, the people. She reluctantly agrees and drives to NC. Ten years ago one little girl went missing but since she was the daughter of an abusive man and his wife, 'trailer trash' no one did anything. But then another girl is taken, Olivia, who is returned because she's a nonverbal autistic child (and the niece of the now sheriff) and a third child is taken. In place of each of them an apple-headed doll is left (non-relevant fact, those things creeped the hell out of me as a kid)

Annie has no shortage of subjects, the preacher and his wife, the abusive dad and his criminal cousins, the wealthy piano teacher, and the witch in the woods (i.e. old mountain woman who reads tarot and makes herbal remedies who I rather identified with).

What I really liked was the folklore aspect of this. There isn't any real witches but rather the story of her. And like oral storytelling traditions go, the story changes with the storyteller. This witch and her crows and her story is important to the story and I loved that.

I am very much looking forward to Annie, especially since we finally get a mystery in which the investigator doesn't do something idiotic to get in danger for the big exciting climax. It's great to see that because so many of them lean so heavy on the crutch of making them do something dumb to get into trouble. This didn't Annie is competent and empathetic. I liked her very much.



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Pride Month

8 Jun 2025 19:39
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
31 Ideas To Take Action & Celebrate Pride Month In 2025

June is Pride Month! This month-long celebration is an opportunity to celebrate the very human and very beautiful spectrum of gender and sexuality, all while coming together to fight for widespread equality and justice in the LGBTQ+ community.


Nintendo Switch for sale

8 Jun 2025 15:16
torachan: (Default)
[personal profile] torachan
Anyone in the US interested in a used Switch? No original box, but I've got the dock, AC adapter, HDMI cable, two sets of joycons (black and red/blue), the holder thingy that turns the joycons into a regular controller, one set of wrist straps for the joycons, and a charging station. It also has a memory card already installed.

I'm looking for $100 including shipping.

Birdfeeding

8 Jun 2025 14:48
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Today is mostly sunny, humid, and warm. It rained yesterday and last night.

I fed the birds. I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.

I dropped the Java moss into the trough pond. It floated. If it doesn't sink after absorbing water, I may need to find a rock to put on it.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 6/8/25 -- I did a bit of weeding in the septic garden and new picnic table.

EDIT 6/8/25 -- I did some work around the patio.

EDIT 6/8/25 -- I sowed cypress vine seeds around the support wire and in the septic garden.  Some of the earlier ones have sprouted, but I plant extra because they often get eaten.

I gathered a few poppy seeds.

The first Asiatic lilies are blooming, white with pink tips, around the telephone pole.  :D  Daylilies have buds.

I've seen a male cardinal at the hopper feeder.

Lots of things are sprouting in the septic garden.  \o/

EDIT 6/8/25 -- I picked half a bag of mulberries in the south lot and along the front fence.

I've seen a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches plus a mourning dove.

EDIT 6/8/25 -- I picked half a bag of mulberries along the front fence and in the savanna.

EDIT 6/8/25 -- I pulled weeds from the tulip bed.




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dhampyresa: (Gwen Stacy)
[personal profile] dhampyresa
I was rewatching Avengers: Infinity War and it, again, struck me how bloody hypocritical Steve's "we don't trade lives" line(s) is. Friend. Pal. Bro. My man. Do you really think no Wakandan is gonna die fighting Thanos' armies. Like. Get a fucking grip, omg.
spikedluv: created by tarlan (misc: tv talk by tarlan)
[personal profile] spikedluv
Leverage: Redemption: Good ep! spoilers )


Murderbot: This ep was just okay for me. spoilers )


Resident Alien: Good ep! spoilers )

B5 Triple Drabble: Hollow

8 Jun 2025 18:42
badly_knitted: (B5)
[personal profile] badly_knitted
 


Title: Hollow
Fandom: Babylon 5
Author: 
[personal profile] badly_knitted
Characters: Lyta Alexander, Kosh.
Rating: PG
Spoilers/Setting: Walkabout.
Summary: There’s a hole inside Lyta where she used to sometimes carry part of Kosh.
Written For: Challenge 477: Amnesty 79 at 
[community profile] fan_flashworks, using Challenge 413: Negative Space.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Babylon 5, or the characters. They belong to J. Michael Straczynski.
A/N: Triple drabble.
 


 
Hollow... )
badly_knitted: (Dee & Ryo black & white)
[personal profile] badly_knitted
 


Title: Over And Done
Fandom: FAKE
Author: 
[personal profile] badly_knitted
Characters: Dee, JJ.
Rating: PG
Written For: Challenge 453: Over You at 
[community profile] drabble_zone.
Setting: After Like Like Love.                                          
Summary: JJ realises he’s not in love with Dee anymore.
Disclaimer: I don’t own FAKE, or the characters. They belong to the wonderful Sanami Matoh.
A/N: Double drabble.
 


 

Double Drabble: Click

8 Jun 2025 18:14
badly_knitted: (Pout)
[personal profile] badly_knitted
 


Title: Click
Author: 
[personal profile] badly_knitted
Characters: Ianto, Jack.
Rating: PG
Written For: Challenge 868: Code at 
[community profile] torchwood100.
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: The latest alien visitor is annoying Ianto.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.
A/N: Double drabble.
 
 


Click... )
paranoidangel: PA (Default)
[personal profile] paranoidangel posting in [community profile] unconventionalcourtship
Title: A Difficult Decision
Author: paranoidangel
Fandom: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Pairing/Characters: Beverly Crusher/Will Riker, Deanna Troi/Worf, Will Riker/Deanna Troi
Rating: General
Length: 1751 words
Summary: Doctor Beverly Crusher has always treasured her friendship with first officer Will Riker. Until an unexpected night of passion leaves her expecting his baby! Now she must acknowledge what she’s long denied: Beverly wants Will to be more than her best friend. But Beverly’s previous trauma still haunts her, and Will’s scared of losing what they already have. Can they find the courage to forge a life – as a family?
Notes: Set after Generations, and at the beginning and end of Triangle: Imdazi 2 by Peter David

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/66299935
creepy_shetan: cropped candid portrait photo from SDCC 2015 of Gwendoline Christie, Adam Driver, and Domhnall Gleeson having fun together (FO trio // sometimes it's good to be bad)
[personal profile] creepy_shetan posting in [community profile] comment_fic
[ If you're interested in being a Tuesday-Thursday guest host, you can sign up here. Thanks! ❤ ]
↑↑↑ Available dates:
June 17 & 19
[June 23-27: Lonely Prompts Week]
July 1 & 3
July 8 & 10


Hello, everyone! It's Sunday (night here ;_;) again already, huh... That was fast. Let's put off reality and think about Lonely Prompts instead! :D? If this is your first time at [community profile] comment_fic on a Sunday, you can either request previous prompts to be filled or share your recent fills for prompts. (Or do both, of course!) ✎

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We have plenty of prompts that might just nibble away at your brain today. You can browse through the comm's calendar archive (here on LJ or here on DW) for themed and Free For All posts, or perhaps check out Sunday posts for Lonely Prompt requests. (Or, you can be like me, and try to save interesting prompts as you see 'em... and then end up with multiple text doc files full of [themes + links + prompts] that you can easily look through and search for keywords.) Multiple fills for one prompt are welcome, by the way! Oh, and you are very likely to find some awesome fills to read as well, and wouldn't it be nice to leave a comment on those lovely little writing distractions? ~_^

Whichever you decide to do, prompt or fill (or both), please remember:
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9. Finally, please remember to add your prompt fills to our AO3 collection: Bite Sized Bits of Fic from 2024 collection. See further notes on this option here.

How to link:
[a href="http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/449155.html?thread=70682755#t70682755">MCU, Tony Stark/Pepper Potts, She's wearing daisy dukes and one of his button-down shirts.[/a]
(change the brackets to "<" and ">" respectively)
or:
http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/139897.html?thread=30155641#t30155641
Burn Notice, Sam/Michael/Fi, "It's always been you. And it's always gonna be you."

We are on AO3! If you fill a prompt and post it to AO3, please add it to the Bite Sized Bits of Fic from 2025 collection.

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If you have a Dreamwidth account and would feel more comfortable participating there, please feel free to do so… and spread the word! [community profile] comment_fic


A friendly reminder about our posting schedule: Themed posts for new prompts go up on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Saturdays are a Free for All day for new prompts of any flavor. Sundays are for showing Lonely Prompts some love, whether by requesting for someone to adopt them or by sharing any fills that you've recently completed.
tehexile: (Default)
[personal profile] tehexile posting in [community profile] 100words
Title: Running Away With Someone's Shoes
Fandom: Xenoblade Chronicles X
Rating: G/Gen
Notes: L gets common human expressions wrong while trying to do customer research.

Read more... )
spikedluv: (summer: sunflowers by candi)
[personal profile] spikedluv
Today was supposed to be parade/chicken dinner day at mom’s. Unfortunately, we had a huge amount of rain that caused ditches and creeks to overflow their banks. The parade was canceled because of flooding but the chicken bbq was still on so my siblings and I gathered at mom’s for chicken dinners. My brother came, when he doesn’t normally come for the parade and other festivities, because he wanted to see my mom before her surgery. We sat on the screened-in porch and listened to it rain outside, which was surprisingly nice when we weren’t getting wet.

I managed to do three loads of laundry, the usual amount of hand-washing dishes, and scooped kitty litter. I also watched the current ep of Resident Alien and an HGTV program, read some more Amelia Peabody, and still talked to mom on the phone. I also got extra sleep because I slept in until 8am for the first time in ages! (Going back to bed after getting the dogs back inside, of course.)

In bad personal news, we even had flooding at our home, which is unheard of because we’re not near any creeks. What happened, in two instances, was a matter of blocked drainage. The drain outside the basement got plugged, so our basement flooded for the first time ever. (Back when Hurricane Irene gave us about 13" of rain, a tiny bit of water entered the basement through a crack in the floor, but nothing before or since, until now.)

The other was the pond. Pip puts a mesh wire over the spill pipe in the spring so the baby geese don’t get sucked down it, and that mesh got blocked, so the pond built up until it spilled over the banks. A lot of fish were caught in the spill, unfortunately. And that’s in addition to the normal build-up of water we get in a line across the property (where the slight down hill from the house meets the down hill from the hill where the pine trees are). There was so much water.

Pip has been squeegeeing the basement, but a squeegee can only do so much. He’s going to have to jack hammer an actual hole into the basement floor for a sub pump and squeegee the water into it. What a pain in the ass. (Thankfully Pip had a change of plans! He’s going to try to vacuum the water out with a shop vac ~before he goes to the effort of jack hammering a hole in the floor!) He also had to go in the pond several times to unclog the mesh so the water could flow out the way it was supposed to. (In addition to the rain, the pond fills with run-off from the hill above it, and there was a LOT of run-off.)

Temps started out at 63.0(F) and reached 76.4. Thankfully the rain ended mid-afternoon and the sun came out.
thepasteldyke: pink heart with pink text in two rows, first row reads frejr, second thepasteldyke (frejr heart)
[personal profile] thepasteldyke posting in [community profile] anime_manga
I keep forgetting to crosspost, and I don't want to spam, but I also don't want to make the post overly long, so I'm using a table to minimize the length.

Title: Amber, like the colour of her eyes
Fandom: Paradise Kiss
Pairing: Hayasaka Yukari/Sakurada Miwako
Rating: G
Word Count: 511
Summary: Yukari didn't realise her eyes would become an integral part of Miwako's latest creation.
dreamwidth, AO3, website
Title: The final beep.
Fandom: Jujutsu Kaisen
Pairing: n/a, Satoru & Shoko friendship fic
Rating: G
Word Count: 492
Summary: Satoru's tamagotchi dies. It's more painful than he expected.
dreamwidth, AO3, website
Title: And the cherry blossoms bloom
Fandom: Show By Rock!!
Pairing: Sumomone/Uiui
Rating: G
Word Count: 344
Summary: Sumomone catches Rararin talking to a cute girl she's never met before.
dreamwidth, AO3, website
Title: Hikkoshi Soba
Fandom: Show By Rock!!
Pairing: Sumomone/Uiui
Rating: T
Word Count: 453
Summary: Sumomone and Uiui finally get an apartment of their very own.
dreamwidth, AO3, website
Title: She took my heart and my number
Fandom: :REverSAL
Pairing: Koizumi Ayame/Matsuyuki Ayame
Rating: T
Word Count: 765
Summary: Ayame is talked into going to a Halloween party at a club for the first time,
and she manages to get Ayame-han and Takayuki to come with her. She didn't expect the emotions it would cause her.
dreamwidth, AO3, website
Title: Don't wait for the tide just to dip both your feet in
Fandom: Yatamomo
Pairing: Yata/Momo
Rating: M
Word Count: 1166
Warnings: *Referenced Underage Prostitution, Referenced Rape/Non-con, Trauma, Asphyxiation*
Summary: Yata takes Momo to the beach so Momo can finally learn how to swim. Not everything goes quite as planned.
dreamwidth, AO3, website



thepasteldyke: Super Sonico with her finger resting close to her lip, mouth slightly open (sonico)
[personal profile] thepasteldyke posting in [community profile] femslashfete
Title: She took my heart and my number
Fandom: :REverSAL
Ship: Koizumi Ayame/Matsuyuki Ayame
Prompt: #52 Jealous
Rating: T
Scope/Length: 765 words
Warnings: None
Notes: Title from the song girls girls girls by Fletcher.
Summary: Ayame is talked into going to a Halloween party at a club for the first time, and she manages to get Ayame-han and Takayuki to come with her. She didn't expect the emotions it would cause her.

 


Early Humans

7 Jun 2025 23:57
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
3,500-year-old graves reveal secrets that rewrite bronze age history

Around 1500 BC, radical changes occurred in people's lives: they ate and lived differently, and the social system was also reorganized.
Bronze Age life changed radically around 1500 BC in Central Europe. New research reveals diets narrowed, millet was introduced, migration slowed, and social systems became looser challenging old ideas about nomadic Tumulus culture herders
.

Today's Adventures

7 Jun 2025 19:12
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Today we went to the Fairy Market in Effingham. :D

Read more... )

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